Veterans get their photograph taken at Downing Street before the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph.
Photograph: REX Shutterstock

Remembrance Sunday services are being held across the UK to pay respects to the country’s war dead, with the Queen and political leaders laying wreaths at the Cenotaph in London.

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The monarch was joined by the Duke of Edinburgh and members of the leading political parties at the war memorial in Whitehall on Sunday morning.

A two-minute silence took place at 11am and wreaths were laid at the foot of the memorial, followed by a veterans’ march. David Cameron laid a wreath at the Cenotaph shortly after the Queen and was followed by Jeremy Corbyn.

After joining the other party leaders to lay his wreath at the Cenotaph for the first time, the Labour leader was to attend a ceremony in his Islington constituency, where he was to read a verse by the first world war soldier poet Wilfred Owen. He chose not the better known Dulce et Decorum but a short poem, Futility, lamenting the death of a farm boy, one among the hundreds of thousands who would die in France, including Owen himself, killed in 1918.

Jeremy Corbyn lays a wreath of poppies at the Cenotaph. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

There had been speculation whether Corbyn, a lifelong pacifist, would wear a white poppy to the ceremonies as he had in the past, but he wore a red poppy at the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall on Saturday night.

Sunday’s ceremony was expected to be slightly shorter this year, with arrangements made to reduce the time war veterans were made to stand before the parade moved off.

But politicians are to continue to lay wreaths individually after a Westminster backlash forced a rethink by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which oversees ceremonial arrangements.

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands also lay a wreath this year, following an invitation from the Queen to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands after the end of the second world war.

This year marks a number of other significant anniversaries in the UK’s military history, including the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

The weather in the capital was expected to be dry, according to MeteoGroup, which said the sun could break through in places. But other Remembrance Sunday events across the country, particularly in northern England and Scotland, could be hit by a band of rain moving south, forecaster John Griffiths added.

Thousands joined the Queen, a host of senior royals and the prime minister, David Cameron, at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday to honour the war dead and pay tribute to veterans from all conflicts in the annual event.

The book of remembrance was delivered to the stage by Cpl Anna Cross, a reservist with the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, who recently travelled to Sierra Leone to help with the Ebola crisis.

That country’s outbreak has now been declared over by the World Health Organisation, but Cross’s story highlighted the varied nature of service to the country.

The mood fell even more sombre when the Last Post rang out in the theatre, and during the minutes of silence poppy petals drifted from the ceiling. The service concluded with traditional prayers, hymns and blessings before an enthusiastic rendition of God Save the Queen.